It’s tough to pick a satisfying replacement. Talk of first, second and third worlds is passé, and it’s hard to bear the Dickensian awkwardness of “industrialized nations.” Forget, too, the more recent jargon about the “global south” and “global north.” It makes little sense to counterpose poor countries with “the West” when many of the biggest economic success stories in the past few decades have come from the East. All of these antiquated terms imply that any given country is “developing” toward something, and that there is only one way to get there. It’s time that we start describing the world as “fat” or “lean.”
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